


Man Down

by ghirahimuwu



Category: Hunter X Hunter
Genre: Angst, Mutual Pining, Nonbinary Character, Nonbinary Kurapika (Hunter X Hunter), Other, Pining, Torn Apart, the good stuff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-10
Updated: 2020-07-10
Packaged: 2021-03-05 04:15:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 889
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25188550
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ghirahimuwu/pseuds/ghirahimuwu
Summary: Mini-ficThe incessant trilling of the phone cannot shake Kurapika's feigned indifference from its thousand-years-slumber. Yet he tries, Heaven knows he tries.
Relationships: Gon Freecs & Kurapika & Leorio Paladiknight & Killua Zoldyck, Kurapika/Leorio Paladiknight
Kudos: 10





	Man Down

**Author's Note:**

> My second fic for this amazing series I cannot be assed to read. Please leave a comment if you like it, I love hearing what you guys think <3 Enjoy! Stay safe, at home, and take care!

Watch as it rings, ripping out its electronic vocal cords, which would hoarse with effort were they organic at all.  
The worst thing about him was his stubbornness. It was, however, a trait they shared. Perhaps that was what had made them fall in love with this graceless, tall, scarecrow-adjacent lionhearted fool. He hadn't a single hair of common sense in him most of the times. Especially when it came to human interaction.   
Well, then. Watch as it rings and rings ceaslessly, as the beeps herald words that they do not want to read, for they only open the wound, for they only mean worry about their own state.  
That quest was not to be shared. They knew it, and they had told him, and the rest of their friends, the two of them, the only two of them. And for some reason the words never permeated their heads. Was it nobility, love (such a word felt off in their tongue) or something else what drew them to closely watch and fret over their state? Doesn't matter because in time he had learned to pay them in kind.  
Every message and every call met with all too cold radio silence, intermittent flashes of life signals when they absolutely could not be postponed. As when they sought for healing hands or the motivation that came only from fisherboys, knights and even assassins.

When had they lost all the faith in love? Hard to remember now that those three were so awfully, painfully close to restoring something lost in ancient times with persistent ministrations to the soul, touches to the heart. Kindness was a long forgotten language, and to find the last surviving speakers of it had at first only awakened their scientific interest. Dissecting their mentalities, they had come to know the three of them all too well, but some more than the others. It was funny, now they showed them how to speak it, too, and they pretended to be illiterate, incapable of forging words in the same way.  
Oh foolish thoughts and distance, with bloodstained hands as the witness of their pain and labor, but no friends. God forbid they knew their worries were correct, at all times. Every step a life threatening experience, nothing was as certain as the lack of certainty for tomorrow's existance. Would those lungs live to see another day, would those eyes open to the morning air?   
Four people wondered that. One, about themself. The other three were not as selfish. They were okay, they were okay, always in company of books or each other. The odd one out had grown inseparable from bloodshed and the faint sound of eyeballs.

**

With all the defeated sigh of a man down, he slumped back into his way too uncomfortable spring couch. Hell, it wasn't even his. The college owned it, he noted with a little sarcastic chuckle, much like it owned his own life. At least his time. Of course it owned his time, as well as a hefty and not unimportant part of his wallet.   
Not that he could complain, he had been an outstanding student. The only thing keeping him from perfect grades was the nagging fear hammering the sides of his skull every time he picked up a book. How are they? What are they doing? Are they tending to their wounds properly? He liked to believe that yes, everything was going smoothly for his friend-and-hopefully-something-else-if-he-was-reading-the-situation-correctly. He had an unwavering faith in their abilities. Not as much in them accepting help when needed. In those regards, he'd rather bet on a flying pork.

If he had a sliver more of strength he would have crushed his phone in his hands. Whatever was going on for the last month or so in their life, it better be task enough to leave them with no time to confirm their alive-ness to a friend. Tears dwelled in his heart where they couldn't dare to peek out, and much like what he was learning to treat, it festered. Behaved like a sulk. Their sulk, particularly.  
And his mind, cursed be it, wandered to the many times he could have told them just how much they mattered, and that they did not have to be alone. Now he was stuck drawing their likeness on boring yellowish margins, on even more boring yellowish afternoons after sleeplessness, etching them to immortality in the pages of a borrowed public library tome of -he paused to check the name on the cover, focused as he was in his studies- Medical Anatomy Atlas.  
Atlas had it easy, he thought, and then proceeded, out loud. Wasn't he the dude who carried the world on his shoulders? Fuck, I'd trade places.  
From the bottom bunk his roommate punctuated his verbal musings with a rapping session against the wooden beams. No more thinking out loud for him.  
So back to the books it was, the pit of his stomach as unsatisfied as it was before his last meal. When had it even been? Blond hair, gray -no, black!... red eyes! resting atop a tabard adorned with long lines of bright yellow, golden like their hair. A voice that sounded like a knife when it wanted to, and had the work of songbirds embedded when it was due.  
He was by all means a man down.


End file.
